Nick Lees: Edmonton's Mark Connolly living the Olympic dream

CBC's Mark Connolly, pictured at the 2000 Sydney Olympics with cyclist Lori-Ann Muenzer and three-time Canadian Olympic medal winner and Connolly's former co-commentator Curt Harnett. Muenzer's gold medal win at the 2004 Athens Games was a highlight of his 22-year sportscasting career, says Connolly, who this week begins covering his 10th Olympics, the Pyeongchang games in South Korea.Supplied

Mark Connolly, off to cover the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, for the CBC network, says a favourite moment stands out in his 22 years as a sportscaster.

“It was at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens when Edmonton’s Lori-Ann Muenzer won Canada’s first Olympic track cycling gold medal,” he said.

“Lori-Ann was 38 and bettered a 21-year-old Russian in the Match Sprint final. Few, including Canadian team officials, thought she would medal.”

The cyclist was a self-supported athlete and her coach didn’t have the funding to travel with her.

“Things didn’t look good when just before the final, Lori-Ann blew apart both the tires she had taken with her,” said Connolly. “But showing the true Olympic spirit, French cyclists let her borrow a front tire and the Australians a rear tire.

“Lori-Ann won and I felt privileged to be the one to tell Canadians from coast to coast of her achievement.”

“I was at the orthodontist with our son Jack and Mark and I had such confidence in Lori-Ann that I talked the orthodontist into bringing a television into the waiting room,” she says.

“You can imagine the excitement as both cyclists topped 59 km/h and Lori-Ann won by an eyelash.”

Lori-Ann Muenzer of Canada waves after receiving her gold medal in the awards ceremony for the women’s sprint final in the Olympic Velodrome at the Olympic Games in Athens, on Aug. 24, 2004.DAMIEN MEYER /
AFP/Getty Images

Off to South Korea

There is no telling what excitement lies ahead Feb. 9-25 in South Korea, but Connolly is off to broadcast from his 10th Olympics.

“I will report live on bobsleigh, luge and skeleton,” said Connolly, host of Edmonton AM since 2014. “Bobsleigh is my favourite event because I’ve called so many gold medals for Canada.

“But there is always a chance I will be drafted in to cover another event. When Canada played field hockey in a 2002 Commonwealth Games match in Manchester, England, I was called in as a last-minute replacement.

“I had no idea about the game. But I was told not to worry. I found my analyst was an Australian hockey Olympian. She carried me.”

Mark Connolly will cover the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, for the CBC network.Supplied

In the Pyeongchang skeleton, Connolly will be partnered with Jon Montgomery, whose 2010 gold medal performance at Whistler, B.C., was capped by an unusual television moment when he drank a jug of beer while celebrating outdoors in the village.

Early beginnings

Connolly says as a kid he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do and in his teens he worked for CBC Edmonton as a janitor.

“Hugh Tadman, a Catholic School trustee and a radio announcer, heard me give the class historian’s speech at my graduation at Austin O’Brien High School and suggested I pursue a career in radio,” he said.

“I spent five months washing cars and then another five driving a truck before I decided to go back to school. I studied radio and television at NAIT for two years.”

He didn’t graduate because he had sent tapes to radio stations in Peace River and Fort McMurray and was immediately offered a job in Peace River.

“But CJOK-FM in Fort McMurray offered me $100 more a month,” said Connolly. “In 1981, aged 20, I was making $900 a month,”

Finding love

It was in Fort McMurray, where he was the play-by-play voice of the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Fort McMurray Oil Barons, that he met his now wife Alyson.

“Alyson had just graduated from the University of Alberta’s drama department and came to work in the city’s 1984 summer theatre program and appear in the production of Grease,” said Connolly.

“We were both in the musical. Alyson played Sandy, the female lead, and I was Vince Fontaine, the sleazy DJ.”

His wife explains. “Mark would come to rehearsals in his sweats after rugby practise. I found him kind of cute. A week after our first date, we were definitely in love.”

The couple married in 1988, have two sons and celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary July 9.

Mark Connolly and wife Alyson Connolly, seen here enjoying Santorini after the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, also enjoyed a holiday together in China after the 2008 Olympics.Supplied

Connolly went on to work in Red Deer and Edmonton before spending 22 years as a sportscaster with CBC Radio and TV.

He became a familiar face on television when he took the job as news anchor at CBC News Edmonton from 2010 to 2013. With his wit, humour and charm he was a good choice for the host of Edmonton AM, say fellow staffers.

“It was the perfect job for me,” he said. “But some might find getting up at 4:15 a.m. not ideal.”

Connolly said covering the Olympics has been his broadcasting highlight and believes his career opened up when he covered the 1995 Canada Winter Games in Grande Prairie.

The following year he was asked to go for the first time to the Summer Olympics, being held in Atlanta.

“It was an exhilarating experience,” he said. “I worked alongside Ernie Afaganis, the doyen of Canadian sportscasters. U.S. President Bill Clinton opened the games and Muhammad Ali carried the Olympic torch.”

His wife travelled to join him after the Athens and Beijing Olympics, but her job as a voice and public speaking coach won’t allow her to travel to Pyeongchang.

“I’m not a sporty person anyway and might sometimes be an embarrassment around athletes,” she said. “I recall Mark taking me to my first Oilers hockey game in 1985. I asked if that was Mark Messier in goal.”

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